BACKGROUND Tutorial-based assessment commonly used in problem-based learning (PBL) is thought to provide information about students which is different from that gathered with traditional assessment strategies such as multiple-choice questions or short-answer questions. Although multiple-observations within units in an undergraduate medical education curriculum foster more reliable scores, that ...

Competency-based medical education (CBME), by definition, necessitates a robust and multifaceted assessment system. Assessment and the judgments or evaluations that arise from it are important at the level of the trainee, the program, and the public. When designing an assessment system for CBME, medical education leaders must attend to the context of the multiple settings where clinical trainin...

CONTEXT Factors that interfere with the ability to interpret assessment scores or ratings in the proposed manner threaten validity. To be interpreted in a meaningful manner, all assessments in medical education require sound, scientific evidence of validity. PURPOSE The purpose of this essay is to discuss 2 major threats to validity: construct under-representation (CU) and construct-irrelevan...

Recent trends in medical education are moving rapidly away from gaining a certain number of marks in high-stakes examinations and towards gathering evidence of clinical competence and professional behavior observed in clinical environments (workplace-based learning). In the Miller's framework for assessing clinical competence, workplace-based methods of assessment target the highest level of th...

BACKGROUND Ongoing course evaluation is a key component of quality improvement in higher education. The complexities associated with delivering high quality medical education programs involving multiple lecturers can make course and instructor evaluation challenging. We describe the implementation and evaluation of an "intensive course review protocol" in an undergraduate medical program METH...

BACKGROUND As assessment has been shown to direct learning, it is critical that the examinations developed to test clinical competence in medical undergraduates are valid and reliable. The use of extended matching questions (EMQ) has been advocated to overcome some of the criticisms of using multiple-choice questions to test factual and applied knowledge. METHODS We analysed the results from ...

BACKGROUND Heterogeneous basic science knowledge of medical students is an important challenge for medical education. In this study, the authors aimed at exploring the value and role of integrated supportive science (ISS) courses as a novel approach to address this challenge and to promote learning basic science concepts in medical education. ISS courses were embedded in a reformed medical curr...

OBJECTIVE Online learning is an efficient new educational method that is able to link teachers with geographically dispersed students and capture the interest of students with interactive materials. Our objective was to describe curricula of new Web-based electives about pain for undergraduate medical education. DESIGN We created three interactive Web-based elective courses about pain targete...

To ensure that continuing medical education (CME) continues to evolve so that it offers educational activities that are relevant to physicians in keeping with the definition of CME, CME providers must respond to and prepare for emerging expectations. This article puts into context the impact of the current emphasis on lifelong learning in medicine, particularly the requirement for maintenance o...

A large gulf remains between what we know and what we practise. Eisenberg and Garzon point to widespread variation in the use of aspirin, calcium antagonists, blockers, and anti-ischaemic drugs in the United States, Europe, andCanada despite good evidence on their best use. Such variation is common not only internationally but within countries. Large gaps also exist between best evidence and pr...